


The Failures of Margaret Schlauch

by sixbeforelunch



Series: Other Side [2]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Fixit: s07e17-18 Heroes, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-26
Updated: 2007-09-26
Packaged: 2018-01-19 09:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1464310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixbeforelunch/pseuds/sixbeforelunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the "timestamp" meme. 30 minutes after Other Side, from Daniel's POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Failures of Margaret Schlauch

Margaret Schlauch is failing him like she's never failed him before. It's unnerving. He's read _The Gift of Languages_ just about once every year since he was twelve years old, not counting the year he was on Abydos, or the year he was ascended. Twice a year, if he's going through a stressful time, which he pretty much always is since joining the Stargate program.

It's pure comfort reading. Easy reading, only because he knows half of it by heart, but engaging enough that it takes his mind off of things.

And yet she chooses now to fail him.

He kissed her.

Not Margaret Schlauch. She's dead.

He kissed Janet Frasier. She is very much alive, no thanks to the errant staff blast that almost killed her.

Almost. Didn't.

He kissed her.

It shouldn't matter, a friendly kiss between two friends, except he wants to kiss her again. And not on the forehead.

Margaret Schlauch picked a really crappy time to fail him, he has to say.

He should have brought _Language_. Edward Sapir has never failed him. Except the night after Sha're was...

Okay, he is definitely not going down that line of thought. Especially not after he kissed--in a completely friendly and platonic way--Janet Frasier. Janet Frasier who had almost been killed by a staff weapon blast to the chest just like Sha're...

But he isn't going there either.

He's so busy thinking about Margaret Schlauch and Edward Sapir and their failures to distract him, and so busy not thinking about Janet Frasier and kissing her somewhere other than the forehead that he barely hears notices Janet going into the kitchen.

"Janet..."

"I can carry a plate, Daniel."

Daniel follows her into the kitchen anyway, because he'll have to answer to Sam and Cassie (and Jack and Teal'c and the entire SGC, really) if anything happens on his watch.

Janet gives him a glare, but all Daniel sees is the way her face is still too pale. When he offers her his arm, she takes it, but she doesn't lean too heavily on him, so Daniel doesn't object when she steers them for the living room and not her bedroom. 

Safely squared away on the couch, Janet gives him an almost pleading look. "Anything on TV?"

Right. She's reached the well enough to be bored out of her mind, not well enough to do anything about it stage of her recovery.

"I've been reading," Daniel says. Or he would have been reading if Margaret Schlauch hadn't failed him.

"Anything good?"

"Linguistics, mostly. And the epic that SG-3 brought back from Nine-Seven-One."

Janet stretches and then winces. Daniel stares out the window at the mother walking past with her baby and tries not to act like a fretting grandmother.

"How's the epic?"

"Um. Reads like a trashy romance."

Janet brightens considerably. "Oh?"

Daniel blinks. "Well. Um. It's..." He thinks he should point out the literary merits of the work, or it's sociological implications, or the way you can trace the language back to a variant of Ancient, mainly because he doesn't want to admit that he assigned two linguists to work on a translation of what's turning out to be the alien equivalent of Harlequin. But. "It's pretty much a trashy romance."

"Can I read it?"

"Well, it's in Krisk." Krisk is the language of Nine-Seven-One. The translation, what there is, is back at the SG1. All he has with him are some incomplete notes.

"Oh." Janet sounds disappointed.

"I could tell you the gist of the story," Daniel offers.

Janet tucks her feet up carefully. "Tell."

Daniel clears his throat. "Well, in the second section--"

"Wait. What happened to the first section?"

"The first section is about the birth of Vimar."

"And?"

"And it's mostly concerned with the conception of Vimar. In, uh, explicit detail."

Janet smiles. "I'm a doctor, Daniel, I can handle it."

Daniel stares at her. Janet doesn't so much as blush. "So anyway. In the second section..."

And that's how Daniel ends up spending his afternoon telling Janet all about the epic love between Vimar of the Old Reign and Baharsa of the West Kingdom. And if he's a little embarrassed about it later, well, at least he doesn't spending the afternoon thinking about how he wants to kiss her again.

Much.

end


End file.
